Or rather they swung open, like a doll’s, and then closed. Her whole body shivered. Then her eyes moved under the eyelids like she was dreaming and her shoulders arched and contorted. Anne sat back unsure, confused. Peggy’s eyes opened again and stared right at her. Is she seeing me? Peggy’s neck spasmed and her eyebrows twitched and she was coughing, a dry hack and gasp muffled by the intubation, her head jerking against the pillow. And despite her eyes’ being open, and blinking with each cough, it felt to Anne as if Peggy were looking straight through her. Anne stood up and reached over, placing her hand over Peggy’s balled fist. Is she there? Is she scared? Anne couldn’t tell. But they stared at each other as Peggy’s dream seemed to pass, and what was coiled and taut unraveled, and she sank back into the hospital bed, closing her eyes.

Is she seeing him?

Forced to relive that night again and again?

Alone.

Anne withdrew her hand. She too was agonized and alone. And like Peggy, pulled by this invisible string of grief. Anne bowed her chin down toward Peggy, almost touching her forehead.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

Pat Malone packed two brown hard-case Touristers, one filled with his “monkey suits,” the other with everything he had scrounged from American in terms of insurance underwriting, applied actuarial science, and employee benefits. Colonel Frank Borman had been decommissioned, but the offer from Eastern stood. In fact, Pat was desperately needed. The new CEO, another union-busting, deregulating hard-ass who “liked analysis,” had locked out the mechanics in the IAM. That triggered sympathy strikes from the pilots and the flight attendants. The strikes would end in either a settlement—Pat’s job was to threshold the numbers for negotiations—or bankruptcy protection, in which case Pat would have to rewrite the benefits handbook anyway.

And so he was packing, and flying out for Miami that evening.

On top of his dopp kit, Pat placed the AA Big Book and The Little Red Book. Since he walked out of the emergency room it had been eleven days and he had gone to two meetings. The first was at St. Monica’s and was all fidgety testimonials and one-liners from jaundiced Knights of Columbus types. It was vaguely familiar in a penitential Catholic way that made Pat both sluggish and suspicious: Welcome to the island of one-armed men, where we sit around and tell stories about how we lost our arms in the shipwreck.